A Wind of Knives, by Ed Kurtz, reviewed by Rusty Barnes

Ed Kurtz
A Wind of Knives
7.99/2.99
74 pages
independently published


Ed Kurtz's A Wind of Knives, in many ways, a traditional revenge story,. Daniel Hays awakens one day to the horrifying sight of his hired man, Steven, body bloody and mutilated, hanged by the neck and dead. He vows revenge, but not only for the reasons you might think. Steven had been his hired man, yes, but also his lover. The novella that follows is Daniel's long journey to vengeance and a muted, odd sort of peace.

Kurtz is a fine and sensitive writer, first. His words, even as a horror writer primarily, and perhaps more accustomed to showing all the gore that comes with death and dismemberment, never seem to outstrip what they're saying. "Steven's left eye stared glassily; Daniel pushed the eyelid down with his thumb, but it popped back open." The language is always in service to the story, almost invisible, guiding us along through the grim events with a firm hand and steady influence, even as his strict attention to rich and specific detail reveals horrifying sights, from the dead man's eyes refusing to close to a man rising from his gravedirt with a burst of ghoulish energy and a worm in his pocket.

The plot of the book is pretty straightforward. Daniel follows what clues he has--not many--to a group of men who are responsible for something evil. Daniel's unsure if that something includes Steven's death, though, and he follows some leads and gets off-track. He meets an array of characters, along the way, men and women who love him. They help him and thwart him to varying degrees, their actions always reflecting Daniel and Steven's relationship, giving us more insight into why Steven's death is so traumatic. That death never leaves Daniel's mind, and when finally confronted with the most monstrous of evils, Steven's killer, finds resolution only in a muted way. the ending resonating in true noir fashion: there's a way for the losers in the world. They rarely see victory in the ways they'd like.

What drives me to read is discovering writers like Kurtz, in whose hands we're capably guided through places we'd rather not go to ends we don't expect. I imagine this was even rarer when the novella first came out. I can't think of many--any?--bisexual characters in the western genre, or very often in genres beyond, and the re-release of this book proves even more fully that we need writers like Kurtz to show us the way. Writers like him are in short supply, good,indelible writers especially and this book is a trailbreaker in all the best ways.


I took this review and cashed in on an opportunity to ask Kurtz a few questions which shed some late on the genesis of A Wind of Knives, which I trust will be as interesting to you as they were to me.

What were your influences in writing A Wind of Knives?

I’m a tremendous fan of Western fiction from Louis L’Amour to Larry McMurtry, and I read scads of Western novels every year, but with extremely few exceptions one doesn’t see much in the way of marginalized and underrepresented protagonists. It’s a straight, white, cis-male world for the large part, with a handful of token Native and African-American characters along the way, but LGBTQ? Forget it! So in that sense, I didn’t really have an influence, apart from wanting to write a sort of anti-heroic, anti-revenge, anti-Western that is, at its core and heart, a love story.

What attracted you to the western to tell this particular story? Were you put off at all by the limited readership?

I wasn’t at all put off by the limited readership because the moment I conceptualized the story, I knew that would be the case. Readers interested in Westerns overwhelmingly aren’t going to be interested in queer content, and vice versa. It’s an uninspiring Venn diagram for a writer like me! But I’m a bisexual Western fan hailing from Arkansas with a particular kind of experience and particular stories I wanted to tell, so it had to be this one, whether it got read or not.

I'm trying to imagine the writing and original publication arc for this book and it seems as if it would have been a daunting process. Can you talk a little about the writing process for it and then how you managed to find a publisher for something seemingly so niche-oriented?

Originally, I wanted to write a full-length novel that charts the course of the two men’s relationship over multiple lifetimes, but as I closed in on the end of A Wind of Knives, I decided this was the story, full stop. What I ended up with was almost impossible to sell – a 20,000 word queer Western. No one wanted it, under a very small publisher, Snubnose Press, took it on. It was well-reviewed, but barely sold. Then the press went out of business and the book remained out of print for years. I tried again and again to interest agents, publishers, etc. in what I deem my very best work, but it was just too hard a sell for all of them. Ultimately, I reissued it myself. It still barely sells, and I’m still unsurprised. But it’s still my very favorite thing I have ever written, and certainly the closest to my heart. I no longer write or publish (though there’s at least one more novel yet to release on the horizon), so in retrospect, A Wind of Knives is what I’m most proud of.

Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith, reviewed by J.B. Stevens

Slow Bear
Anthony Neil Smith
Fahrenheit 13
140 pages
Price $12.99/3.99
January 2020
reviewed by J.B. Stevens

Novellas do not receive enough attention. The shorter-form, if well-done, is immensely satisfying. A novella’s limited time commitment allows a reader to sample authors, genres, and publishers they might otherwise avoid. Anthony Neil Smith also does not receive enough attention.

As a crime-fiction fan I’d heard of Smith, but never read any of his work. I’m glad I finally made the time. Smith’s writing style is tight and unpretentious. He has the delightful ability to fade into the background. Slow Bear becomes an experience you feel--more than words on a page.

Micah “Slow Bear” Cross, is a former reservation Police Officer in North Dakota, and was medically retired from the force. This is Smith’s description: “Slow Bear used to be a rez cop. He wasn’t good at it, not really, but he was good at being bad at it. The one time he tried to be good at it, he got his whole fucking left arm shot off by an ex-soldier over something that happened in a war Slow Bear didn’t know much about. That was a year ago.”

Smith doesn’t cover the referenced war’s specific conflict or theater. Slow Bear is detached from the rest of the world. Smith consistently presents characters in a way that is concrete, but allows the reader to fill in the blanks. Here is the portrayal of the casino’s bartender, Lady: “She was cute. She dyed her hair red then blue and sometimes it was just dark brown, like now, and one side of her head was shaved. Her glasses were thick and she tried to distract from them with too many earrings and a nose ring. Chubby cheeks, baby fat all over. Why not, Slow Bear? Why not?”

In the present Slow Bear hangs around the bar and works as a fixer for whomever is willing to pay. In reality, he spends most of his time chatting up Lady and sipping beer. However, Slow Bear isn’t a boozehound, he prefers heroin, but does his best to avoid chasing the dragon.

This passage is a good example of the tight writing style and Slow Bear’s heroin avoidance:

“I thought you didn’t drink coffee,” Lady said. She’d already gotten her pie. Slow Bear hadn’t noticed the guy bring it.
“I tried to give it up. But I need the caffeine.”
“Then why did you try—”
“Heroin. I gave it up because of heroin.”
Her eyes widened, her lips got tight. “You do heroin?”
A deep breath and sigh and fuck fuck fuck. “I used to. Once I lost my arm, they put me on some pretty lame pain pills, but I didn’t like them. I got OxyContin instead. I liked those. And next, someone offered heroin, and I tried it, and I really liked that. But shit, heroin, girl, that’s a lifestyle choice. That’s a commitment. So I kicked it cold-turkey twice. Three times. And that got me onto coffee, which was a much better replacement than I expected. So I was making six, seven pots of coffee a day. But then I ran out of money. Coffee is expensive.”
“So is heroin.”
“So is orange juice. But I like orange juice. I like coffee. I’ll just drink cheaper coffee.”
“It’s free at the casino.”
He grinned. “I’ll remember that. Is that pie good?”
“Shit yeah,” with her mouth full. She cut off a bite with the fork and handed it over.
He ate the bite and agreed, that was some good fucking pie.”

As the story progresses, Slow Bear becomes involved in a marital disagreement between a cheating wife, a boyfriend, and the husband. Soon three people are dead--one by Slow Bear’s hand. These deaths lead to a violent chain of events in which Slow Bear deals with reservation police, tribal leadership, oil-industry executives, government agents, and mafia power players. Eventually, Lady is kidnapped by sex-traffickers. A hefty dose of violence follows. Slow Bear fights hard, but doesn’t always win.

In a few places Smith’s academic background pokes through, most notably with a Don Quixote parallel. This did not come across as abrasive or pretentious, but it is fun for the aware reader.

Regarding less enjoyable aspects of the book, they were limited. I didn’t like that all cops were willing to break the law, even the “good” ones. Here is Smith discussing Trevor, the chief of police:

"Slow Bear smiled. Yeah, a downright honest smile for once. “Why the fuck would he believe something like that?” “Because that’s the truth.” Trevor grabbed Slow Bear’s beer bottle and slammed it onto Slow Beer’s forehead once, twice, three times before it shattered, and Slow Bear felt pulverized, then there was ringing in his ears and blood leaking into his eyes. He fell off the stool onto his bad shoulder and got his feet tangled in the stool legs, twisted his ankle and the damned stool fell on top of him. He shoved it out of the way. He’d bruised himself all over and was still blinking blood and glass away. That’s when Trevor kicked him in the gut.”

Overall this story is fast and engaging. This scene, where Lady and Slow Bear discuss spying, shows the pace well:

“Pretty stupid,” Lady said with her mouth full. “I dream of jobs like that.”
“He wasn’t offering dental.”
“Who cares? You could buy your own insurance with that kind of money. Can you imagine? It would be like, like, like writing for TV. You make it up. You tell the Hat about it once a week, and you’re done. Cha-ching.”
Cute. He grinned. “Let’s go home. If I’m quiet, if I behave, maybe Trevor will leave me alone. I really want to be left alone.”
“What did you do in the first place?”
“Let’s not go there.”

The book is non-commercial noir in the best way. The main characters are unlikeable (with the exception of Lady). The whole production is violent. The locations are hardscrabble and rural, but not the lush Southern rural that is popular. The drug use is unglamorous and redemption never comes. The story wraps up in a satisfying, but open-ended, manner. In the new decade let us all resolve to pay more attention to both novellas and Anthony Neil Smith.

J.B. Stevens lives in the Southeastern United States with his wife and daughter. His writing has been featured in Mystery Tribune, Out of the Gutter, Close To The Bone, Thriller Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Criminal Element, and other publications.


He can be found online at twitter.com/IamJBStevens and jb-stevens.com.

King of the Blue Rose, fiction by William R. Soldan

Elvis McCullers aimed his stick and struck the cue, scattering balls across the felt. It was a Wednesday night at The Blue Rose, slow, the half dozen cars and trucks in the gravel lot belonging to Ray the bartender and a small group of men and women posted up at the hightops along the back wall. The men all dressed in work wear, the women in high heels, jeans, and low-cut tops. Cigarette smoke hazed the low neon glow and gathered in a swirling cloud above the pool table.

One of the men crossed the room and stacked his quarters on the rail. “We got next game,” he said.

Elvis was playing alone, just shooting around, but took his time. Pool had never been his game, but he enjoyed the meditative quality of it. It placed him in the present moment, with nothing else on his mind except the balls in front of him. And tonight he was on his way to starting over, wanted to forget what was behind him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. He was still a little hung up about his old man.

As he worked his way around the table, the men grew irritated waiting for him to finish. They’d already been talking loudly, but increased their volume even more, competing with the jukebox, which currently played some indistinct pop-country garbage one of the women had put on.

“Hey, Slick,” he said, “how’s about you wrap it up, huh?”

Elvis was bent over, lining up a shot. He didn’t move but raised his eyes to the man. A single curl of Elvis’s greased back hair hung like an apostrophe down his forehead, and he blew it from his eyes with a puff of his lower lip. He didn’t respond to the man.

Elvis hadn’t come to the tavern with the mind to socialize. He’d come to make a delivery to Ray, who was now at the far end of the long bar wiping out an ashtray with a wet rag.

Ray dealt pills and the occasional teener of crank between schlepping drinks. Though the place was dead tonight, Fridays and Saturdays drew every kind of degenerate one could imagine from around the county to see the live bands that played out back when the weather was nice, and crowded the bar like a feed lot when it wasn’t. Ray was their solitary supplier at The Blue Rose, but he got his goods from Elvis, who’d not long ago expanded his inventory. The supply of meth had begun to exceed the demand in his little pocket of Ohio. Everyone seemed to be on pain pills now, and Elvis could accommodate. Oxy. Vicodin. Fentanyl patches. Morphine lollipops. It all sold like water to a man dying of thirst. Elvis was a businessman and prided himself in his entrepreneurial initiative. He knew only fools were rigid and tried to control the market. A wise man remained flexible, bent whichever way the market moved.

He’d had a damn good thing going with a doctor across the state line in West Virginia, who ran a pill mill outside of Wheeling. The man was a back specialist, and he had some rather hefty debts he wouldn’t disclose when he and Elvis had set up their first deal. He only said he needed a lot of money fast. And again, Elvis could accommodate. But after only a few lucrative months working with the man, he and a dozen other doctors on either side of the Ohio River had gone down in a DEA sting and now resided in the federal pen in Morgantown. This left Elvis in the lurch, between the proverbial rock and the wall.

The way it was now, wholesale acquisition of pharmaceuticals had become near impossible. When suburban white kids started dying, the government put the kibosh on willy-nilly dispensing of pretty much anything stronger than Tylenol. And certain doctors got hot. The best Elvis could hope for now would be buying scripts from folks who hadn’t yet been cut off by their physicians or their insurance companies. And that felt a little too much like moving backward. No, he figured it was time to take his stash of cash—in the neighborhood of a hundred grand after tonight’s last delivery—and hit the road. He’d always planned to go places, and though he’d never given much thought to where, he knew the time had come.

He really had nothing keeping him in Shale Run anymore. His mama had spent the better part of the last decade strapped to a bed up in Locust Grove with what was left of her mind blowing around her skull like autumn leaves. His baby brother, Seth, had ended an eight day meth bender by eating a bullet. That had only left his old man, all rods and pins from the waist down after a mine collapsed on him. Now he spent his days idling away in front of the television and berating Elvis at every turn, even though Henry McCullers relied on his son for the dope that kept him comfortable. Nothing and no one else remained. So Elvis had decided only a few hours ago to start a new chapter—no, a new story altogether.

By now, the fire department would have found his father melted to the La-Z-Boy in what had been the living room. He’d been a lifelong smoker. The only time he didn’t have a coffin nail clamped between his wrinkled lips was when he was sucking off the oxygen tank beside his chair. It was only a matter of time before the poor old bastard burned the place to the ground, they’d say. But despite the ill will he’d harbored for his father most of his life, now that it was done, Elvis felt a nagging remorse that was hard to reconcile.

He’d parted with the last hundred Oxys he had to his name, with no more on the horizon, and tossed the bag of cash Ray had handed over into the trunk of his Caddy before returning to the bar to down a few drinks and shoot around for a while. He still didn’t know where to go from here, so he had nothing but time. But the whiskey hadn’t had the desired effect. Instead of brightening his outlook, it had left Elvis stuck in a brooding mood, reflecting on things he’d rather leave behind.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, Slick,” the man said.

Elvis sunk the 8 ball and stood up straight. He stared at the man.

“It’s all yours, partner,” he said, tossing the pool cue onto the mottled green.

The four men, gathered around the table to play doubles while the women remained where they were. One of them, a redhead with tight, high-waisted jeans and a sleeveless blouse, kept sending glances and grins in his direction as Elvis stood with his elbows on the bar. The men horsed around and grab-assed one another like high school kids, though Elvis suspected they were in their thirties like he was.

Ray shook his head and poured Elvis another shot of whiskey. “They been coming in a few times a week,” he said. Ever since the fracking started, seems like these dipshits been showing up by the busload. They’re working the fields over in Cedarville. Buncha loudmouths, but their money spends the same as the rest, so . . .” Ray shrugged.

Elvis went over to the internet juke and put on a trio of gospel tunes. He loved himself some gospel. He began singing along with “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and the redhead who’d been eyeing him off and on fixed her gaze and tilted her head, as if she were trying to decipher something. The other women snickered and whispered behind their hands.

“What the good goddamn is this shit?” one of the men said, looking around and then over at Ray, who just shrugged again and went back to wiping down the bar. The man turned toward Elvis, who was still singing along.

Elvis walked past him and back over to the bar. Already the gospel had done what the liquor had not, and he grinned at the redhead, staring right past the man, who just looked at Elvis with a disgusted expression.

“What are we in fucking Sunday school all the sudden?” the man said. He snapped his fingers in Elvis’s face to get his attention, but Ray spoke up.

“When it’s done, you can play whatever the hell you like, buddy, so calm yourself down.”

The man grunted and went back to the game. The four of them grumbled and glared at Elvis between shots.

When “Peace in the Valley” came on next, the man started up again. “Are you fucking serious?” he said. “Huh-uh, no goddamn way, not gonna happen. This shit is killing my fucking buzz.” He stomped over to the juke box with a hand thrust into his pocket. He came out with a handful of change, and plunked in some quarters. These types of jukes had a feature that allowed you to skip songs for a price, and Elvis knew that was what this man was aiming to do.

“My songs ain’t over, partner,” Elvis said without turning away from the bar.

The man acted as if he hadn’t heard and punched in some numbers. The gospel was cut short and replaced by the opening bars of Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps.”

“Now that’s more fucking like it,” the man said, doing a little shuffling dance back toward the pool table. They all laughed and began woo-hooing as they high-fived.

“Elvis,” Ray said, “don’t go making a mess of the place, all right?” He poured Elvis another shooter. “Here, this one’s on the house.”

But Elvis no longer had the taste for whiskey.

He approached the men. “I said the song weren’t over.”

The man snickered, his patchy beard clinging to his face like a fungus. “What you plan to do about it, Slick?”

“Name’s Elvis.”

The man slapped his thigh and laughed. “Of course it is. Nice hair, by the way.” He turned toward his friends and gained approval for the slight with more laughs. The only one who wasn’t laughing was the redhead, who looked a little irritated but interested in what might happen.

Elvis returned to the jukebox and put in four more quarters.

“You better think twice there, Hound Dog,” the man said.

Elvis cut off the music with the same gospel tune that had been on before the man had hijacked it. He started singing along. “There will be / peace in the valley . . .”

“You believe this asshole?” the guy said, turning to his buddies again. When he turned back, Elvis brought the pool cue he’d plucked from the wall rack beside the juke down across the man’s face, opening his cheek like a soft potato.

The man dropped to one knee, and Elvis whirled the toe of his cowboy boot in a roundhouse that caved in the man’s temple as it snapped his head to the side and laid him flat on the wooden planks of the floor.

The redhead just watched while the other three women gasped. Two of the other three men closed in on him from either side, and Elvis helicoptered the pool cue, missing one man as he ducked but catching the other across the jaw. The man stumbled back as his buddy came in low. Elvis grabbed the back of the man’s head and brought his face down into his knee with a dull crunch. The man he’d caught with the cue held a hand over his bleeding mouth. Now he and the last man moved in.

The gospel music came through the bar’s sound system like a choir of angels, and Elvis pulled the gold-plated Walther PPK with mother of pearl inlays from the small of his back. One man stopped short while his buddy was almost on Elvis, who aimed and took out the man’s left knee in a spray of blood and bone.

Now three of the women were screaming. The man who’d been shot let loose a high-pitched string of motherfuckers toward Elvis. The redhead looked surprised but cocked a half smile. Ray just shook his head with a hand over his eyes. The last man stood there with his hands raised looking unsure.

Elvis gestured the man to his knees and stuck the barrel of the pistol between his teeth. He began to sing again while the man emptied his bladder and tears cascaded down his cheeks.

When the song ended, Elvis removed the gun from the man’s mouth, slapped him across the face with it, and went to the bar. While he downed the shot Ray had poured him, the man scrambled to his feet and fled the bar, leaving the women and his buddies behind. A moment later, a truck engine roared to life and there was the sound of rubber biting gravel as he tore out of the parking lot.

Three of the women remained crouched and crying over the men’s bodies, one of them fumbling with her cell phone. It fell from her shaking hands before she could dial the police and skittered across the floor. Elvis eyed her and she made no move to retrieve it.

The redhead walked over. “Buy a lady a drink?” she said.

He grinned and nodded to Ray, who looked frustrated but resigned. He poured them each a shot. They clinked the glasses together and tossed them back.

“What’s say you and me take a drive?” he said.

She smiled and hooked her arm through his. The other three women stared in disbelief through teary red eyes.

Elvis laid two twenties on the bar. “Nice knowing you, Ray,” he said. “You take care now.”

Outside, Elvis opened the door of his restored, pink ’55 Fleetwood and helped her into the passenger seat. On his way around the car, he spotted a set of fuzzy white dice slung over a pickup truck’s rearview mirror. He reached through the open window and took them, then climbed behind the wheel of his Caddy and draped the dice over his own rearview.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Bobbie Anne,” she said.

“You sure it ain’t Priscilla? ‘Cause you sure look like a Priscilla.”

She only smiled.

He turned the key and the V8 awoke with a growl. He rolled to the edge of the lot to where it met the asphalt of Highway 52.

“Where we driving to?”

Elvis adjusted the radio dial. Another gospel song, “Lead Me, Guide Me,” filled the air and washed over them.

“Wherever we want in the whole wide world, darlin’.”

He winked at her, and the tires spit gravel as he cut the wheel onto the road, no past behind them, just dust.

William R. Soldan is the author of the story collection In Just the Right Light and the collection Houses Burning and Other Ruins,forthcoming from Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books in September 2020. He's got some degrees and a few nominations but knows that doesn't impress anyone. His work has appeared in Thuglit, EconoClash Review, Switchblade Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Tough, The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, and others. You can find him at williamrsoldan.com.

Infinity Sky, fiction by Kristen Lepionka

They were called the Speed Dragons. Jeramey first laid eyes on them in the lobby of the Columbus Hotel, four smug guys in nearly identical Affliction t-shirts dragging their gear across the polished floor. They made a beeline for Chess, her boyfriend, who lounged with Jeramey's guitars on a leatherette ottoman, and the band members engaged him in conversation for several minutes before Chess finally shook his head and pointed to Jeramey standing in line at the front desk, like it was just then occurring to him that they were looking for her. Jeramey felt a stab of irrational hatred for the Speed Dragons as they gazed at her, blank. But she was forced to turn away, her attention pulled into this new indignity.

"No, there's been a mistake. I'm supposed to be in the penthouse suite, with the view of the river," she said, shaking her head at the room keys in their little paper sleeve. The wedding planner told her it had all been arranged. "It was all supposed to be arranged."

The desk clerk nodded. "We've had the tiniest change of plans," she said, then dropped her voice to an unapologetic whisper. "We have some very high profile guests in the hotel this weekend."

Jeramey considered. So no one recognized her here--fine, even though she still looked as good as the girl in that white miniskirt on the cover of Touch and Go. Or, at least, that girl's slightly older sister. More or less. But that was beside the point. She could feel her personal equity receding, like soil erosion of the spirit. As it was, she'd already compromised by flying coach. There isn't a first class on a Chautauqua Airlines regional commuter flight, the wedding planner had told her, getting a little snippy. It's only for two hours. Is it that big of a deal? But Jeramey was the one who had to buy Chess three bloody marys on the plane just to make him shut up about it. Nine dollars each, and she could smell the cheap vodka from two seats away. It was getting to be a bit much to endure, even for ten grand.

Now the Speed Dragons were heading her way. Jeramey didn't need to meet them in order to distill this band down into their essence: there would be a Brad among them, and a Wesley or a Corbin, a weekday-afternoon radio DJ and an ad agency project manager. The quiet-looking one in the fedora would be the only real musician of the group but he would avoid any kind of direct attention, terrified that someone would discover his terrible secret--bald at age twenty-eight. The wedding planner had passed along their LP so that Jeramey could learn the songs in preparation, but she hadn't. "Listen," she said to the hotel clerk, wanting to be done with it before the Speed Dragons knew all about her business. "Forget it. The seventeenth is fine."

"It's a lovely room," the clerk said. "Great views of the insurance building!"

***

After the wedding, Doug Beavers rode the sad little shuttle back to the hotel and fumed. It was almost funny, how some smug assholes just think they're the center of the universe, but others, even though it hurts to admit it, actually are--they somehow know everyone that you know, they've already been anywhere you could hope to go, they even turn up at your cousin's stepdaughter's wedding and charm the pantyhose off every woman there. Bennett Langdon was one of those assholes. It transcended coincidence. It was just the way things were. Beavers bet Langdon had a private driver to take him to the reception. No way a guy with that much cash would ride on a shuttle bus, with its stained grey-brown seats and sticky floor and vague chemical blueberry deodorizer in the air which gave the impression that someone had, recently, peed inside the vehicle.

At least Langdon had come to the wedding alone. "I bet he didn't give get an and guest," his cousin murmured sympathetically when they both discovered the horror, that Langdon was some peripheral friend of the groom's family. It would have been undeniably worse if he'd turned up at Beavers' cousin's stepdaughter's wedding with Celia Beavers on his arm. This was not out of the question--it had only been a year earlier that the whole affair went down, his plain, good-hearted wife and the cap-toothed charmer who taught the six-session self-actualization seminar that Beavers himself had paid for Celia to attend. It was hardly a fair fight; Langdon, silver-tongued devil of the self-help aisle, versus Doug Beavers, Weeble-shaped middle manager. The affair was long over by now, but the divorce was forever and Beavers was the type to hold a grudge.

"I really wish you could just relax and have a good time," his cousin said when he stalked back to the table with a plate piled high with bacon-wrapped water chestnuts.

"Oh, I'm having a great time," Beavers said. Langdon was currently holding court near the wedding cake with two of the bridesmaids, who were giggling behind their wrist corsages. "I just want to keep my eye on him. No surprises.”

"But Dougie, he probably doesn't even know you're here."

"Then it's even more important to know where he is," Beavers said. He set down the hors d'oeuvres plate and headed in the direction of the bar.

"....penthouse," he heard Langdon say to the women. "It's got an incredible view."

***

So it was not the worst performance of her career. No, that honor would have to go to the gig in Berlin when her bass player puked on one of the tube amps and shorted out the entire sound system. But it was, quite frankly, a close call. The Speed Dragons played angsty garage-rock versions of "The Electric Slide" and "Butterfly Kisses" while Jeramey faked along. If not for the weed that Chess had procured from a bellhop, she would have been in tears. As it was, she wondered how many more times she'd be able to play "Infinity" without her head exploding. "Sweet forever sugar," she sang as the newly-wedded couple swirled around the ballroom during their first dance, "infinity sky." This was the whole reason she was here--the rich, dim, Midwestern bride having always dreamed of dancing to the tune played live, by Jeramey Jones herself, at her wedding. It was a wildly inappropriate choice, nothing but a heroin-soaked ballad about, well, heroin, but the masses, with their endless capability to misunderstand, had turned it into a mainstream love song, rocketing Jeramey out of the indie punk world and into the spotlight for a moment in time. The moment had since passed--long since passed--but the song endured.

"I just can't even tell you," the bride gushed at her afterwards. "Having you here, omigod! I want you to stay all night!"

"Totally!" Jeramey said, accepting a clammy hug before departing immediately.

She sought refuge in the lobby bar, where two bourbons filled in the cracks left by the mediocre weed. She sat against the wall and half watched a silent baseball game on a television mounted to the wall and willed no one to speak to her, but she was only midway through the second drink when a large, oniony presence appeared to her right.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?" the guy asked with a blast of gimlet breath.

Jeramey looked at him. He was fat and fiftyish, sloppily buttoned into an odd grey tux, the bow tie of which dangled from one shoulder like it was trying to get away from him. He had hair the color of nothing and pale grey eyes that seemed to have trouble focusing.

"You're not famous or something, are you?"

"No, I was just at that wedding," Jeramey said.

"Which side," her new friend said. "Bride or groom?"

"Bride."

"Yeah? Me too. My cousin's--"

"Can I just watch the ball game, please?"

At this, the guy laughed way too hard. "The ball game?"

"Yeah," Jeramey said. "I want to watch the ball game."

"You're interested."

"I am."

"Okay, Abner Doubleday, who's playing?"

"For the love of God," Jeramey muttered. She slid off the bar stool and tossed a crumpled tip next to her half-empty glass.

"For such a baseball fan, you're a pretty poor sport," the guy said. He spun around on his stool and grabbed her ass.

Jeramey bristled but walked away without looking back. "Ohio fucking sucks," she announced as she exited the bar, to a few mutters of agreement and one whooping cheer.

***

Chess was sitting on the bed with the bellhop when she walked into the room. "Wow, are you her?" the bellhop said.

"Yup, this is Jeramey Jones, 1997's Best New Artist nominee," Chess said in a fake-announcer voice. He held a smoldering joint with one hand and sifted through a pile of minibar snacks with the other.

"1998," Jeramey said, shooting him the finger. "If you set the sprinklers off, I'll kill you."

"Don't worry," the bellhop said. He was a lanky kid with reddish hair buzzed into a fade. "We got it covered." He pointed up at the smoke detector, which was shrouded with a dripping wet washcloth. He offered her the weed, but Jeramey shook her head.

"I'm exhausted," she said. "Can we wrap up this party?"

"It's only nine-thirty," Chess said.

"Seriously?" She flopped onto the edge of the bed. The room was beige and claustrophobic. It had an anonymous quality to it, like a shared cubicle at the phone company. "I think time is messed up in Ohio. It's stuck or something."

"Tell me about it," the bellhop said. He unscrewed the cap on a tiny bottle of Bailey's and chugged it.

Jeramey lay down on the edge of the bed and selected a whiskey bottle from the pile, drinking it without sitting up. Then she rolled off the bed and went to the window. "Great views of the insurance building!" she muttered. The building in question was a concrete void with a blinking radio antenna on the top. "Hey," she said finally. "You don't have keys to the penthouse suite, do you?"

***

"This has to be the worst idea ever," the bellhop whispered as they padded single-file off the eighteenth-floor elevator. "But I'm just high enough to go along with it."

"I just want to see the view," Jeramey whispered back. She steadied herself on the wall with one palm. The night was getting silvery, like she was viewing herself through a window streaked with liquid diamonds.

"Do you think the mini bar has better shit up here?" Chess asked.

"What, like tiny bottles of Cristal?"

"That would be awesome," the bellhop said. "Okay, this is it."

They stood in front of the door. It looked pretty ordinary. The bellhop rapped sharply on it with a knuckle and called out, "Room service!"

No response.

"Room service," the bellhop said again, knocking louder this time.

Nothing.

He turned to Jeramey and gave her an impish smile. She decided that she'd sleep with him, if it came up.

"Let's do it," she said.

The bellhop inserted a plastic key card into the slot and pushed the door open slowly. Jeramey  practically heard angels singing. The room was at least twice the size of hers, decorated in plush navy blue instead of beige, with a whole separate living room area and kitchenette. Chess made a beeline for the mini bar. "Shit, there's macadamia nuts in this one," he said.

Jeramey headed for the window but froze just after she crossed into the bedroom. The room was not, as it turned out, empty.

"Fuck," Jeramey said.

A dark, lumpy shape was snoring quietly from the bed.

"Fuck, fuck."

"Oh, man, we need to get out of here," the bellhop said from behind her.

But the window, with its view of the river, was right there, just a few feet away. Jeramey darted 

towards it and parted the curtains, but it was too dark to see anything other than the ghost of her own reflection.

"Okay," Jeramey whispered. "We can go."

As she crept back past the snoring lump, it stirred and emitted an oniony belch. "Wait a minute," she said, turning back. She squinted in the thick darkness at the man's face. "No fucking way," she said. Of all the high profile guests in the hotel, this asshole from the bar was the one who took her room?

"Come on, let's go," the bellhop whined.

Jeramey held up a hand. She wished she had a Sharpie--the man's dumb, doughy face was just begging for a freehanded mustache. He twitched and rolled to the side, his jacket flopping open. Jeramey saw the bulky square of a wallet peeking out of the pocket.

Even better.

***

Doug Beavers had a problem. More accurately, he had several problems, but with varying degrees of urgency.

One: his head felt like a malfunctioning tilt-a-whirl

Two: his mouth tasted like onions

Three: his pants were spattered with Bennett Langdon's blood

Things had gone bad pretty fast. He'd sat in the bar for a long time, drinking overpriced gimlets and working up a stormy rage over Langdon and the bridesmaids. Somewhere in there he decided that it was his moral obligation to intervene--those nubile, satin-sheathed maidens needed protection! Langdon was a predator. But when Beavers got up to the top floor of the hotel, Langdon had opened the door with a quizzical smile and it was clear he was still alone. It was also clear that he had no idea who Beavers was, which somehow made it all worse.

"I, uh," Beavers stammered, losing his nerve within two seconds, "I went to one of your seminars. Last year."

Langdon had just loved the sound of that and invited Beavers in for a drink.

Which was more or less the last thing Doug Beavers needed.

But halfway into that drink, Langdon disappeared into the bedroom and reported that he had to get ready to meet up with a young lady he'd met at the wedding. "Women at weddings are just so game," he called. "Are you getting lucky tonight, my man?"

That was enough for Beavers. A tingling in his chest traveled down his arm and into his fist. 

Reactivated, he was on his feet in a second, aimed like a surface to air missile towards his enemy. He threw the punch before he even realized he was in the bedroom, and what a punch it was: a glorious right hook that connected with Langdon's jaw just as he turned away from the bathroom mirror, looking alarmed. Airborne for a second, Langdon tumbled backwards into the shower, sputtering blood. Beavers moved in for the coup de grace with a primal yell: a kick to the chin. It sounded awful, an unnatural wrenching of bone and skin. Langdon went instantly slack-eyed and still.

Wigging out, Beavers backed out of the bathroom and sat on the bed. But there was blood on the mirror, on the sink, and it turned his stomach. Did that really happen? He peered back into the bathroom--yes, it had. He pulled the door closed. Now he did need that drink. He went for the liquor bottle with both hands.

A few hours later, he'd came to on the bed, a sharp line of sunlight from the windows across his torso. He sat up halfway and rubbed his face. A plastic room key was stuck to his cheekbone in a slick of gummy dried drool. At first it felt like a dream, until he realized that dreams, no matter how vivid, don't actually bleed on you. A glance at the clock revealed that it was ten in the morning. He had to piss, but there was no way he was opening that bathroom door. He looked through the peephole into the hallway and saw a housekeeping cart three doors down. "Motherfucker," he said

.

He flung open the closet and flipped through the items hanging there, settling on a pair of flat-front khakis. He dropped his own bloody pants and pulled Langdon's on--or tried to, a plan that might have worked eighty pounds ago, but not now. Beavers clutched his infuriatingly large belly and kicked the pants back into the closet.

The housekeeping cart was now two doors away.

He had no choice but to pull on the fluffy terrycloth bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. It smelled like hotel and Langdon's obnoxious Old Spice, but it did, at least, fit. 

Beavers grabbed his room key off the bed and darted out into the hallway, his bloody pants tucked under his arm like a football.

But down on the tenth floor, he inserted the room key into the slot and was met with a blinking red light. He inserted the key again and again, not understanding. The key on the bed must have been Langdon's, he realized--his own key was in his wallet, which was--

Which was--

Which had formerly been in his jacket pocket, but was no more. The wallet, he concluded, had to be back in Langdon's room. Beavers banged his head on his own locked room door, cursing the day he ever filled out the little RSVP card for his cousin's stepdaughter's wedding in the first place. He tried shouldering the door open, the way you see hero spies do it in the movies. He tried jamming Langdon's key in and out of the lock in the hopes of confusing the electronic gatekeeper into submission. Eventually he just headed back to the elevator and hit the UP arrow, but when the doors slid open, two uniformed cops blinked out at him.

"I, uh," he mumbled. There was no way he could go back up to the room now. "Sorry, I was going down."

***

Jeramey woke up devastatingly hungover. The inside of her mouth tasted like campfire and Cheetos. She was fully clothed, her head resting on the bellhop's stomach. Chess was spread-eagled on the floor, the bedspread tangled around him. She had a vague memory of buying round after round of drinks for everyone in the lobby bar, using Abner Doubleday's American Express. This explained the hangover, but not the Cheetos. She closed her eyes again.

When she woke the second time, it was afternoon. She moved to the floor and smoked half a joint with Chess while the bellhop took a shower. "What the hell should we do here all day?" she said. "Our flight isn't until five."

Chess waggled the joint at her. "Isn't this entertainment enough?"

Jeramey took a drag. Back in the Touch and Go days, the morning after a gig had held a wild, raw 

magic, her fingers sore, her voice hoarse. Champagne for breakfast. Although she knew it was impossible, she couldn't remember ever being hungover on that tour. "Yeah, I guess," she said.

The bathroom door slammed open then. "You guys," the bellboy said.

Jeramey turned. He was brandishing his cell phone.

"There's a dead guy upstairs."

Jeramey didn't understand at first. "What?"

"In the penthouse! There's cops everywhere."

"What?" Jeramey repeated, then it hit her. "Wait, no, that guy was passed out, not dead. What the fuck happened?"

"My friend says there's homicide detectives and everything," the bellhop said. "They're talking to everyone who tries to leave the hotel."

Jeramey dropped her head to her hands. It was certainly going to be hard to explain how she happened to be in possession of that American Express card last night. "Fucking Ohio," she said.

***

Still clutching his bloody pants football, Beavers lurked around the second floor mezzanine and watched from behind a pillar as a coroner's stretcher arrived and then departed with Langdon inside a rubber sack. When the lobby seemed to reach a momentary lull, he descended the stairs and tried to cross the polished floor with confidence. He imagined he was Bennett Langdon--look at me, I'm an asshole millionaire, I'm walking around a hotel in a bathrobe but it's okay because I fucked your wife. The effect of this was more unnerving than empowering. By the time he made it to the front desk, Beavers was shaking.

"Um, excuse me," he said timidly.

The clerk turned to him, wiping her eyes. She was clutching a balled-up tissue. She did not appear to notice his robe. "Sir?"

"I, uh," Beavers said, "I seem to have misplaced my room key. Can I get a new one? It's Douglas Beavers, room ten-sixteen."

The clerk nodded. "I just need to see your ID, Mr. Beavers." She wiped her nose. "We've had an incident in the hotel this morning, so we've been asked to be extra cautious."

"Cautious," Beavers repeated. "Well," he added, improvising, "as it turns out, my ID is in my room. 

Which I cannot access."

The clerk considered this. Beavers smoothed the lapel of his bathrobe meaningfully.

"Of course, sir," the clerk said finally. She gave him a small smile. "You probably want to get out of that bathrobe," she added.

"Oh, yes," Beavers said.

Safely inside his own room, Beavers took a shower and contemplated his next move. The wallet must have been stuck between the cushions of the leatherette sofa or under the bed or somewhere else out of sight, since he hadn't seen it when he had been up there. And reason had it that the police hadn't seen it yet either, since their first stop after finding it would have no doubt been his room. He developed a new set of plans.

Plan A: Wait until the police were gone, and go back into Langdon's room for the wallet. They had to leave eventually, he figured, and it had been a couple hours already. He couldn't get very far without the wallet, given that he had an hour-long drive to get home to Springfield and his car was hovering on E.

Plan B: Live forever in room ten-sixteen.

He figured that he had a few dozen hotel nights' worth of available credit on the American Express he used to book the room. Well, maybe not quite that many, he realized as he ordered two twenty-dollar cheeseburgers and a beer from room service. He needed sustenance if he was going to stay sharp for his mission.

***

At some point during the day, it became imperative to Jeramey that they return the wallet. Though getting high in the middle of a crisis had never had any other effect on her, she started to get panicky and decided it was the fault of the wallet and not the weed.

"Look," she explained to Chess and the bellhop. They'd already missed their flight due to being too freaked out leave the hotel. There were cops talking to everyone in the lobby. "I used his card to buy I don't even know how much liquor last night. I need to get rid of it. What if they come here and do a search?"

"I think it was something like eighteen hundred dollars," the bellhop said, unhelpfully. Jeramey regretted that she ever considered sleeping with him.

Chess, suffering from sympathy paranoia, nodded along. "But we can't just dump it somewhere," he said. "Because as soon as they find it, they'll start trying to trace who dumped it, which makes the whole thing worse. Maybe we could destroy it."

"Like how?"

Chess flicked the lighter.

Jeramey pointed at the smoke detector. "I don't think the washcloth trick will work if we set a wallet on fire."

"Maybe we could cut it apart," the bellhop suggested, "and flush it down the toilet."

After sending the bellhop out into the hotel for a pair of scissors, the three of them stood around the low-flow toilet as Jeramey cut an experimental corner off Doug Beavers' driver's license and let it fall into the bowl. She pressed the flusher and held her breath.

But the low water pressure wasn't even enough to make the plastic triangle flutter.

"Fucking conservation," she muttered.

She cut off a larger chunk and dropped that into the toilet too, but no dice. Finally she reached into the water and retrieved the driver's license pieces, shoving all of them back into the little plastic compartment.

"The police have to leave eventually, right?"

Chess nodded. "They do."

"No," the bellhop said. "No. That's an even worse idea than going in there in the first place."

Jeramey shrugged. There was no other way. The weed made her feel certain of this. "We're going to have to put it back in the room," she said.

Beavers conducted some light recon. First, he waited until evening fell, then crept down to the lobby to look for cops. Everything appeared normal again, though.

Phase one, check.

Then Beavers sat down on a leatherette ottoman and faced away from the desk as he dialed the hotel's main phone number from his cell.

"Good evening, Columbus Hotel, how can I help you?"

"Yes, uh, I'm in room, um, sixteen-ten," he said quietly, "and I've been burgled."

"You've been what?"

"Burgled."

"Sir?"

"I think I might have seen someone going into that poor man's room last night," he tried next. "Can you send the police down to talk to me? Ten--I mean, sixteen-ten."

There was a muffled pause. Beavers resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at the desk to see what was happening. "Sir, if you have information about the incident in the hotel, you should contact the police immediately. They're no longer in the hotel, but I can give you the investigator's phone number if you have a pen?"

"I'll call back when I can find a pen," Beavers said.

Phase two, check.

He rode the elevator up to the eighteenth floor, alone this time. Once the doors slid open, he cautiously stepped out and looked around. The hallway was deserted, and the only indicator that anything unusual had happened was a neon green seal over the frame of Langdon's door. These premises have been sealed by the Columbus Police Department. All persons are forbidden to enter unless authorized by the police or a public administrator. Beavers let out a short sigh and slit the seal with his Swiss army knife.

The room had a garbagey smell, but there was no time to contemplate it. He searched the sofa first--no wallet. Then he looked under the bed--no wallet there either. He went back to the door and retraced his steps: doorway, kitchenette, sofa, bedroom, bathroom. He retreated quickly from the bathroom after seeing all that blood again. Langdon's head, Beavers could practically swear, contained more blood than a normal head, Jesus Christ. He closed the bathroom door again and looked out at the room. He couldn't remember being in any of the other areas, but then again, he had quite a few unaccounted-for hours. He crossed to the window and drew open the curtains, and it was then that he heard the unmistakable click of a key being inserted into the door.

***

Jeramey screamed. "Oh my god, I thought you were dead."

Beavers screamed too. He got a little worried. Was he dead?

The bellhop screamed and ran out of the room.

Jeramey threw the wallet at the guy. "I don't know what is going on here, but I don't want anything to do with it."

"Where did you get this?" Beavers said.

"So no one died?" Jeramey said. She looked over her shoulder for explanation but the bellhop was gone.

"Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly," Beavers said.

They both spun around as the door opened again.

"There he is! The ghost!" the bellhop said.

Two cops followed him into the room. "Okay," one of them said. "Which one of you would like to explain?"

Beavers folded immediately. "It was an accident," he blubbered. "He fucked my wife and I just, I don't know, I went crazy for a second. And I thought I left my wallet in here, so I came back in to get it, but it turns out she had it, and I don't even know--"

"Who are you?" the cop said to Jeramey.

"Hey," the other cop said. "You're Jeramey Jones, right? Touch and Go?" He strummed a few notes on an air guitar. "That album defined my twenties."

"Wait, what?" Beavers said.

"Yeah, that's me," Jeramey said. She cocked her head at him and smiled. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the river beyond the window.

That view, just, wow.

Kristen Lepionka is the Shamus and Goldie Award-winning author of the Roxane Weary mystery series. Her debut, THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK, was also nominated for Anthony and Macavity Awards. Kristen grew up inside a public library and now lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her partner and two cats.